Information technology helps to spread Noongar language

Now living in Bunbury, Denise grew up in Boyup Brook and was one of the Stolen Generation.

Her aim is to set up nests of the language around Noongar country.

The Noongar country is the biggest language geographical location in Australia, says Denise. Through colonisation and missionary practice, other Indigenous people brought in different culture and language.

"I'm a Noongar woman from the Wilman and Kaneang clan," she describes herself. "My main interest is reviving and maintaining my Noongar language."

Despite the dislocation of her family, Denise has found that researching the cultural knowledge of her ancestors has helped her find out where she belongs.

The genealogy "can go a long back", she says, "because you're linking people up to country."

"What part of the Noongar geographical location do you come from? Looking at your moieties, looking at your skin group...your clan, your dialect.

"You know which stories are yours. Also what are the boundaries of these stories?

"Who speaks for those stories? I've found a place of belonging. I've found ownership in my county, to my language.

Denise's interest in Noongar language was piqued during a stint as a Language Other Than English K3 teacher in Perth.

She decided to study and took a BA in Language and Linguistics through the Batchelor Institute in the NT.

Her focus shifted from education into the community, going back to the grass roots and documenting the creation stories and the ancestral stories that related to country.

Recently, she's been working on a cultural mapping project involving Google Earth. The endangered language overlay pin points centres around the world which are working to preserve indigenous languages.

Short videos, language classes, instruction on use of about vowels and consonants are examples of the content which can be uploaded to the site, Denise explains.

She herself is concentrating on dialects and how they're used throughout Noongar country. "That would be my first step, is showing the variation of dialects," she says.

Many of the old people with the knowledge have gone, she notes. "It's up to people like us who go out and dig it up -all these resources that we have - to pull it out and use it."

An experience in the Northern Territory showed Denise that much experience and knowledge is yet to be found in the south.

"I was invited to go down the Fitzmaurice River," she recalls.

"That was something so different than I've ever done down here. There was a lot of rock art. It was like stepping into another world."

Protocols were different and managed by a senior woman, she found. "We're learning that stuff down here. We're still learning and growing in that area."

There is still much cultural knowledge of ceremony and ritual locally Denise feels, but the goal is to keep those practices alive and to encourage the children to continue them.

Dancing is one way the young people gain insight. "They talk to the elders about the birds and animals and they learn the old stories.

"They try to combine the ancestral knowledge, blending the old and the new...moving forward, always looking back."

"I want to set up language nests around Noongar country so we can have little camp fires of Noongar language still going."